The Address Of Charles Francis Adams; Of Massachusetts On The Life, Character And Services Of…

Paperback | July 6, 2012

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ... THE ADDRESS OHAELES FKANCIS ADAMS. Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and Assembly of New York: You have honored me by an invitation to perform a duty, from the difficulty of which I shrink the closer I approach it. I undertake it only with an assurance that, were my powers equal to my will, I should erect a monument more durable than marble or brass. The subject is fascinating, from the wide views which it opens of the noblest career of human life, and the highest aspirations of mortal ambition. Whatever may be the value of the modern speculations touching the origin of man, it seems quite clear that his intellectual stature has not essentially changed since the era when we find, in Greece, the most difficult social problems discussed with a profoundness never since surpassed. It is in one of the familiar dialogues reported by the philosopher Plato as having been held by Socrates, with his disciples, that the question is gravely presented whether such a union be possible, in one and the same individual, as that of a philosopher and a statesman. What this combination means is admirably rendered by the latest translator in these words: "A man in whom the power of thought and action is perfectly balanced, equal to the present, reaching forward to the future." The conclusion drawn from that conversation was that such a person, ruling in a constitutional state, had not yet. been seen. More than two thousand years have elapsed since this testimony was recorded, and the solution of the problem, with the added experience of an historic record, embracing the lives of sixty generations of the race, far more widely observed over the globe, is still to seek. Has there ever been such a man? Without attempting to enter upon such a topic, demanding a lifetime of...